Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/329

 application proved successful, and in Wood's words he was removed to Lincoln 'after he had taken great pains to obtain it' (, Athenae Oxon. iv. 351). He was elected on 17 Sept. 1667. His episcopal palace at Lincoln having been hopelessly ruined during the civil wars, and Fuller feeling the importance of residing in his episcopal city instead of at the distant manor-house of Buckden, near Huntingdon, an arrangement was made with the dean and chapter by which the bishop had the occupancy of a mansion-house in the cathedral close during his visits to Lincoln (Lincoln Chapter Acts). Fuller enjoyed the friendship both of Evelyn and of Pepys. The former mentions having dined with him at Knightsbridge on 25 March 1674, together with the bishops of Salisbury (Seth Ward) and Chester (Pearson). Many references occur in Pepys's garrulous diaries to his 'dear friend' Dr. Fuller, with whom he dined on his appointment to St. Patrick's, and was 'much pleased with his company and goodness.' His elevation to the sees first of Limerick and then of Lincoln caused Pepys 'great joy' and more especially as he found that his old friend 'was not spoiled by his elevation, but was the same good man as ever;' 'one of the comeliest and most becoming prelates he ever saw;' 'a very extraordinary, good-natured man.' He records the satisfaction with which he saw the bishop for the first time occupying his place in the House of Lords on 6 Nov. 1667, and a conversation he held with him on the probability of the Act of Toleration being carried, 23 Jan. 1668. In 1669 Fuller offered the archdeaconry of Huntingdon to Symon Patrick, afterwards bishop of Ely, which was declined by Patrick, 'thinking himself unfit for that government' (, 'Autobiography,' Works, ix. 451). During his tenure of the see of Lincoln Fuller did much to repair the damages inflicted on his cathedral church by the puritans during the great rebellion. In a letter to Sancroft, Fuller expressed his intention of presenting the cathedral with 'a paire of faire brass candlesticks' to stand on the altar to take the place of 'a pitiful paire of ordinary brasse candlesticks which,' he writes, 'I am ashamed to see, and can indure no longer' (, Remains, Surtees Soc. pt. i. p. 217 n.) He restored the monuments of Remigius, St. Hugh, and others, supplying appropriate epitaphs in excellent latinity, and, as his own epitaph records, he was intending further works of the same kind when he died at Kensington, near London, on 23 April 1675. His end, according to his epitaph, was as peaceful as his life had been: 'mortem obiit lenissima vita si fieri posset leniorem.' His body was conveyed to Lincoln Cathedral, and interred there under an altar tomb in the retrochoir, by the side of the monument he had erected over the supposed grave of St. Hugh, which the inscription shows he had intended to be his own monument also: 'Hugonis Qui condit tumulum condit et ipse suum.' At the time of his death Fuller was engaged upon a life of Archbishop Bramhall, for which he had collected large materials, 'wherein,' writes Wood, 'as in many things he did, he would without doubt have quitted himself as much to the instruction of the living as to the honour of the dead' (, Athenae Oxon. iv. 351). Fuller was not married. One of his sisters, Catherine, married John Bligh, citizen and salter of London, afterwards of Rathmore, co. Meath, M.P. for Athboy, the founder of the noble family of Darnley. Another sister, Mary, married William Farmery of Thavies Inn. He bequeathed to the cathedral library of Lincoln the best of his books, and to Christ Church his pictures, chest of viols, and his organ. His will speaks of his having had to undertake lawsuits to protect his see 'from the encroachments of ungodly men.' [Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iv. 351; Brydges's Restituta, i. 163; Mason's Hist. of St. Patrick's Cathedral, p. 192 sq.; Kennett's Biog. Notes Lansd. MS. 986, No. 85, p. 188; Collins's Fasti Eccl. Hibern. i. 385, &c.; Evelyn's Diary; Pepys's Diary; Cal. State Papers, Dom. sub ann. 1667; information from J. F. Fuller, esq.; Pegge's Anonymiana, pp. 5, 49.]  FULLER, WILLIAM (1670–1717?), impostor, was born on 20 Sept. 1670 at Milton, Kent. By his own account he was son of Robert Fuller, son of Dr. Thomas Fuller, by the eldest daughter of the Hon. Charles Herbert of Montgomeryshire. His enemies declared that his mother was the dissolute daughter of a farmer named Sandys, and thought him very like his so-called guardian, Cornelius Harflet. In any case Fuller was apparently able to rely on the support of Charles Herbert, his alleged uncle, whose family had a seat at his birthplace. He was sent to school at Maidstone and Canterbury, and his putative father, Robert Fuller, having died when he was six months old, he was apprenticed in 1686 by Harflet to a rabbit furrier in London. From this position he was removed by William Herbert, first marquis of Powis, in May 1688, and shortly afterwards became page to the Countess of Melfort. James II's queen, Mary of Modena, noticed him, took him with her to France in December, and used him as emissary on several journeys to Ireland and England. He was at last re-